2.2.4. Evaluation of a mating station: environmental conditions

Mating between the
virgin honey bee queen and numerous mature drones occurs in the air, at a
certain distance from the hives, in rendezvous sites called “Drone Congregation
Areas (DCA) (Koeniger and Koeniger, 2007; Zmarlicki and Morse, 1963). Location
of DCAs tends to remain constant over time. When establishing a mating station,
it can be useful to assess the presence of surrounding colonies and DCAs. This
can be achieved in several ways, as described in the sections below. A
comparison of the methods described below can be found in Table 4.

Table 3. Meteorological parameters, instruments used to measure the parameters,
and units of measure that can be used to characterize mating stations